In the palmy days of our superstition, when a much denser cloud of ignorance, than even the present, had totally eclipsed the intellectual faculties of men, they were doomed through life by their tyrants, the magicians of supernaturalism, to endure an aggregate of mental and bodily misery far exceeding that of any other class of animals; and this is still the case in exact proportion to the prevalence of that delusion. But lest rebellious reason should induce people to be restive under these earthly sufferings, a mode of remuneration which costs these magicians nothing, was invented, not alone by the preternatural elevation to everlasting inheritance in the celestial regions, after death, but, in addition, all terrestrial animals were made over in fee-simple, as the absolute property of man, nothing else being in view when they were created, but the use and accommodation of the heaven-bound favorite, to kill, eat, and destroy; or if such be his interest or caprice, to hold them in that merciless state of oppression which soon leads to a cruel and lingering death. This is the usual way in which he shows his mighty superiority over them, as "inferior animals." The arrogant assumption of this absurd dogma is not only false in philosophy and analogy, but cruelly injurious in morals, and destructive. These pernicious hatchings of theology are wholly unsanctioned by Nature, who, in her perfect impartiality towards every creature which her purely physical process organises into life, makes an even balance of all her grants and denials throughout the animated world: and though it may appear to the cursory observer that she has, upon the whole, favored some animals more than others, yet all these seeming advantages are counterbalanced or neutralised by other mental or physical qualities of an opposite or defective tendency which, in the most comprehensive sense, reduce the lives of all, as regards the amount' of pleasurable sensations through life, to nearly an equality.** On examining this matter still more closely, we shall find that the greatest proportion of evil or misery invariably falls to the share of those animals who depart the farthest from the laws or conditions of their nature. Of this fatal estrangement, man exhibits an instance that is almost solitary on this globe; for all other creatures obey the conditions of their existence, excepting such as have been compelled to deviate from them, in consequence of being subjected to his usurped dominion. His right to hold a horse or a dog in slavery, is precisely the same as that of holding a negro in bondage; and as for his carnivorous habit of using almost every animal as food, it is justified by his superstition alone, and utterly condemned by his nature. His right to kill and eat a sheep or a deer, is exactly the same in point of moral justice, as that of a shark or a tiger, when they subdue and eat their prey; in which they